Quizzing.in

The Tata Group today announced Noel N Tata as the new managing director (MD) of Tata International. Tata, will step down as MD of group retail chain Trent effective 12 August, but will continue as Trent’s non-executive vice-chairman.

Noel Tata, half brother of tata Group chairman Ratan Tata, who earlier this week was appointed chairman of the Tata Investment Corporation as well, will be based in Mumbai.

Noel Tata is the son in law of Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry, who owns an 18.5-per cent in Tata Sons and is among the likely contenders speculated to succeed Ratan Tata as chairman of the Tata Group,

Tata International Limited has a global reach in international trade and encompasses the entire value chain from supply integration to facilitating third country trade by setting up strategic alliances or wholly-owned subsidiaries with a focus on certain geographies.

The company is engaged in a range of businesses and trading of a variety of products like leather, minerals, steel, ferro alloys and engineering products. Its interests in the value-added business also include automobiles distribution in Africa.

Through its 100-per cent subsidiary, Tata Africa Holdings Ltd, it is present in 11 African countries, China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

One of the latest ads from the Incredible India Ad Campaign. Fantastic would be an understatement.

Airfone the Indian mobile phone maker and a prominent player in Telecom Industry has tied up with T- series, the market leader in Indian music industry to offer its exceptional services for the music lover generation. Airfone is a new generation mobile phone company offering a striking collection of multi-feature, incredible looking mobile handsets reasonably priced for almost every niche.

Now with Airfone’s newly launched mobile handset, AF – 27 users will get a T-Series loaded 2 GB MicroSD Card with 5 year standard warranty as standard accessory which is worth Rs 475 for free. This Micro SD card will consist of chart buster albums such as, 3 Idiots, Tare Zameen Par, Delhi-6 etc alongside 10 Ring tones, 20 Wallpapers & 10 Animations.

Commenting on this association with T- Series, Mr. Vishal Chitkara, Director of the company said “Our association with T –Series will enable our consumers to get Legally loaded content with our phones which ensure perfect quality music and videos.

AF- 27 mobile handset comes with e features like; Java, which enables you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculating mortgage interests & view images in 3D, Mobile Tracker enabling your to track your lost mobile phone with the unique mobile tracker application, M Gurujee an application for serious 7 fun based learning such as preparation for MBA or IAS etc & M Astro offering astrology services on mobile phone.

Along with that AF – 27 offers true music bliss with MP3 playback, FM Radio & expandable memory which provides you with complete freedom of enjoying music on the go. With this handset you can also hook up your headphones or attach speakers to make presence felt wherever you are, as it comes equipped with a 3.5 mm jack & music presets.

This new generation mobile handset is available in red, Black+ Red, Black+ Grey combinations with 1.3 mega pixel digital camera, Bluetooth, dual Sim Connectivity. It also has a Video Recorder and Player that allows for continuous video recording. This multi feature model is priced at Rs 3599/- 

Source: Telecom Talk

You can find questions from the TCS IT Wiz 2010 edition here   ,  TCS IT Wiz 2009 edition here and TCS IT Wiz 2008 herealso find a database of questions that should help those preparing

Some Questions from the Hyderabad Edition. Questions taken from the TCS IT & Tech Wiz Blog.

Answers for these questions available at the original source here

1.) “DoubleClick “ is a subsidiary of a search giant which acquired it, for its ad services, in March 2008. Name its present parent company ?

2.) Which Research and development organization was started in 1984 at Pune to develop supercomputers in India?

3.) WordMole is a game application originally found on which famous communication device?

4.) Jack Dorsey in 2006 made the first attempt to start it. Later he went on to    start a project called Odeo which became a company later. And finally he   together with Evan Williams started this company in October 2006. Which   company/website did they start?

5.) How do we better know Satyanarayan Gangaram who started the telecom revolution in India?

6.) Ideapad is a range of laptops from which company?

7.)     Which company acquired Sybase, an RDBMS company, in May 2010 for  US$ 5.8 billion to enhance  its database systems?

8.) Joybook is a laptop for enjoying the latest entertainment in spectacular HD format. Which company manufactures it?

9.) if     Apple : iPhone, then Google:_____

10.) MeeGo is a Linux based operating system for mobile phones by which company along with Intel?

11.) Classmate is a range of personal computers ,especially meant for children, from which company?

12.)    Which company manufactures the Phenom microprocessor?

13.)        Droid is a smartphone whose name is licensed to Verizon Wireless. Which company manufactures the Droid smart phone?

14.)  Which famous company is manufacturing an ergonomic mouse called “Arc Mouse”?

You can find questions from the TCS IT Wiz 2010 edition here   ,  TCS IT Wiz 2009 edition here and TCS IT Wiz 2008 herealso find a database of questions that should help those preparing

Wynncom Mobiles – Win It All is the Mobile division of SAR Group of Companies. SAR group was founded in 1988 by  Mr. Rakesh Malhotra. The group of companies started with the marketing and distribution of DB UPS and Standard Batteries. SAR is today famous for the Luminous brand.

After signing on Sachin Tendulkar for the Luminous brand of UPS, Wynncom has signed Saif Ali Khan and Bipasha Basu for their mobile phones.

Find below the ads for Luminous and Wyncomm respectively.

One of the most classic Indian advertisements . Titled – The Zing thing, the ad was pretty popular especially for its catchy jingle.

Some history: Gold Spot was one of the three brands started by Ramesh Chauhan in 1977 after the exit of Coke. He later sold the three brands- Thums Up, Limca and Gold Spot to Coke in 1993 for a valuation of around 10 million.

Enjoy the Gold Spot ad below!

Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi and social activist and writer Arundhati Roy, feature in the Forbes list of 30 most inspiring women released.

The list compiled by Forbes Woman, asked its followers on Facebook and Twitter to vote for their most inspirational woman figure.

Oprah Winfrey, television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, won the most votes and leads the poll. She was also voted the most powerful celebrity by Forbes in June.

Roy ranks third on the list while Indra Nooyi is the tenth most inspirational woman figure.

Some other women in the list include actress Angelina Jolie, former US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, Hilary Clinton, J K Rowling, Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama, Mother Terresa, Venus and Serena Williams.

Australian songwriters, including Lisa Mitchell and Josh Pyke, have joined hands to set a world record for the longest ever song.

The grand project attracted 168 co-writers after budding artists were invited to contribute snippets of lyrics to the world first feat.

Producers are now planning to release the song as a charity single.

“This world record attempt was a great way to draw attention to those at the coal face, the songwriters who aren”t always the face you see on the TV or the voice you hear on the radio but who need their name in a big book,” English.news.cn quoted Machine Gun Fellatio keyboard player Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab as saying.

“Also, attempting this appeals to my work ethic since this is a world record that doesn’t even exist yet,” he added.

The world’s longest song was achieved as part of the Song Summit songwriting conference that was held in Sydney in June 2010.

Former Midnight Oil singer and federal minister Peter Garrett, provided the first two lines with the words, “There’s a song in my heart, there’s a story to sing.”

McCann Erickson has conceptualised the latest TVC for MasterCard. The commercial features three Indian cricketers: Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan. The trio are shown at the airport, heading to Kenya for “the great escape” to unwind. The tickets for this cost Rs 2,50,000. They are then shown hiring a car to get to the jungle, which costs them 12,500 Kenyan shillings. Another 15,000 shillings are spent on entry tickets to the reserve. All the three expenses are paid for using MasterCard. The trio then encounter a child at the reserve who identifies them as cricketers. The voiceover then says, “Escaping from one world but connecting to another is priceless. There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there’s MasterCard.”

Commenting on the new campaign, Raja Balasubramanian, vice president of marketing, MasterCard Worldwide India, said, “We are very excited about our new Premium campaign – ‘Escape’. As a brand MasterCard has always tried to reflect the needs and aspirations of the Indian consumer. With growing affluence and awareness, increasing numbers of Indians are traveling abroad each year. The campaign reinforces the benefits that MasterCard provides to all cardholders while traveling – convenience, ease and security – anytime anywhere. For this campaign, we have used the star power of cricketers from the Mumbai Indians to bring to life the concept of ‘Escape’ – something that we all desire when traveling. This is a campaign that will definitely resonate with all travelers and affluent cardholders.” 

On the TVC, Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman and regional creative director, McCann Erickson Asia Pacific, said “The idea behind doing this campaign for MasterCard is to promote cross border travel and to tell people how MasterCard can be a very useful brand for you when you travel abroad.” The agency decided to cash in on their tie-up with the Mumbai Indians for the ad, and play on people’s inherent desire to escape the familiar for the creative. “Not only celebrities but all of us feel that ‘I want to go to a place where nobody knows me and I don’t want to interact with any of those everyday survival things. I want to get away from that’. This psyche is not only a celebrity’s psyche, it’s a common man’s psyche. Personally, when I’m travelling and even a few of my friends say that when they go for a holiday, they don’t want to meet the same set of people again because that takes away the joy of it. You don’t want to talk about those things that you talk about everyday,” said Joshi. 

The TVC is shown below

Today Old Spice is one of the most popular deodorant and body wash brands for men of all ages, but that wasn’t always the case.  On the shelves since 1938, Old Spice had long been associated with the past and elderly gentlemen (I know that the first thing that came to mind whenever I smelled original Old Spice was my grandfather).  However, in 2008 all of that changed.  Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy kicked off a new campaign, Old Spice Swagger, and completely transformed the face of the Old Spice brand, as well as their customers.

Britton Taylor of Wieden + Kennedy presented a case study of Old Spice’s Swagger campaign earlier this week at Effie Worldwide’s ‘Ideas That Worked’ Webinar.  The Webinar focused on three Effie Award winning-campaigns, exploring the goals behind each campaign, the big idea and implementation and, of course, the results. You can watch Effie Worldwide’s great video overview of the campaign here, and read about it below.

The Background

The Old Spice Swagger campaign, which was the 2010 Silver Effie Winner, kicked off in 2008 when Old Spice realized they had to pick up their game if they wanted to compete with new younger men’s products, specifically Axe.  When Axe entered the scene they turned the industry on its head—instead of focusing on the effectiveness of their product as an odor blocker, Axe promoted themselves as the product to buy if you want to attract the ladies.  Old Spice, who had been standing by their 1-800-PROVE-IT campaign (try it and if you don’t like it, just call 1-800-PROVE-IT and we’ll buy you a stick of yours!), bit the dust.

To make matters worse, Old Spice’s “Glacial Falls” scent was performing horribly.  It was the worst performing scent in the Old Spice portfolio and was in danger of being discontinued, losing the company precious shelf space.  The company decided that they wanted to rebrand and re-launch “Glacial Falls” to save the scent, and give the brand a boost.  They went to Wieden + Kennedy for help.

The Goals

Old Spice wanted to keep the “Glacial Falls” scent, but totally rebrand it.  Their target was young guys between the ages of 12 to 34, to compete with Axe.  They were aiming to reach an audience of guys who want to smell great, but not to take themselves to seriously.  Old Spice had created a niche for itself as a product for older, more serious men and they wanted to move away from that.

The objective of the rebranding campaign was to double the sales of “Glacial Falls”.  They surpassed this goal, but we’ll get to that later.

The Big Idea

So how did Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy transform “Glacial Falls”?  They gave it a new, awesome name and a new awesome attitude—Swagger.  In the webinar earlier this week, Britton Taylor explained that Old Spice “wanted a name with some cultural currency and attitude.  ‘Swagger’ oozes confidence and is something that all guys want to possess.”  The name was perfect.  In fact, once they came up with the name about 75% of the work was done—the rest of the campaign just flowed naturally from there.

The campaign would be all about how Old Spice gives guys “swagger”—transforming them from nerdy wimps into strong, manly studs.  The campaign billed the new scent, Swagger, as “The Scent That Makes a Difference,” and hit the web running.

The Campaign

The Old Spice Swagger campaign featured traditional print and television executions (which also made their way onto YouTube), as well as a hugely successful online campaign at SwaggerizeMe.com.  All aspects of the campaign showed off the brand’s new look and attitude and were a huge success.

Print and Television Ads

Old Spice released a series of print and television ads featuring Brian Urlacher of the Chicago Bears, LL Cool J, and NASCAR driver Tony Stewart.  The ads showed these huge celebrities as young men.  Before they started using Old Spice Swagger they were nerds without confidence.  Swagger made them the confident, popular, and awesome men they are today.

Source: Social Times

Reckitt Benckiser Plc agreed to buy Durex condom maker SSL International Plc for 2.54 billion pounds ($3.9 billion), bolstering its health and personal-care business in the biggest acquisition since the company was formed in 1999.
Reckitt’s offer is worth 1,171 pence a share, 33 percent more than SSL’s closing price yesterday. SSL rose 33 percent in London trading, the most ever. Reckitt, the maker of Cillit Bang cleaners and Nurofen painkillers, gained 3.5 percent.
Buying SSL meets Chief Executive Officer Bart Becht’s aim of expanding in health and personal care as growth slows in Reckitt’s larger household cleaners unit. The takeover will help compensate for a slump of as much as 80 percent in U.S. sales of the Suboxone heroin-dependency drug, Reckitt’s fastest-growing product, when generic versions of the product enter the market.
“It’s a very good fit and they will be able to do a lot with the brands,” said Julian Hardwick, an analyst at RBS. “When you take all that into account, the multiples they are paying are reasonable,” he said. Hardwick has a “buy” rating.
Reckitt is paying about 18 times SSL’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Bloomberg data. The maker of Veet hair remover paid almost 30 times Ebitda for the $2.3 billion purchase of Adams Respiratory Therapeutics Inc. in 2008, its last major acquisition.

Dow Chemical Co said last week it would become a global sponsor of the Olympics, hoping it can bring in more than $1 billion of revenue in the next 10 years by supplying material to build game facilities and bolstering its brand.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Midland, Michigan-based company will become the official chemical company for the games, meaning rivals such as DuPont Co and BASF will not be able to sell insulation for walls, polymers to keep ice cold, or other supply materials, to host cities.

“The Olympics is a market,” Dow Chief Executive Andrew Liveris told Reuters. “This is a market and revenue opportunity that will generate $1 billion.”

Dow will join nine other companies, including McDonald’s Corp and General Electric Co as part of The Olympic Partner program, also known as TOP.

Dow’s sponsorship runs through 2020.

The agreement has some questioning the company’s rationale, as nearly all sponsors directly serve consumers, unlike Dow.

McDonald’s, for instance, aggressively reminds its customers that every time they buy a hamburger, they’re helping athletes around the world.

For Liveris, though, the sponsorship offers a chance to tout Dow — and the broader chemical industry — to an audience that might be unfamiliar with its products.

“This is an opportunity to say, ‘We’re not a chemical company. We’re a science company, a sustainable science company,’” Liveris said.

PERCEPTION

Last year Dow cut its dividend for the first time in history and increased its float through a share offering of more than $1 billion. The cash was needed in part to help fund the acquisition of rival Rohm & Haas.

After that buyout saga, the Olympic sponsorship could be frustrating to investors that rely on dividend checks or stock buybacks.

Source: Reuters

A funny McDonalds Egypt ad with the Meatloaf cover- I would do anything for love

Google said it has purchasedMetaweb, whose Freebase open-source database catalogs 12 million movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations and companies, among other data sets.
Freebase maps the relationship of real-world entities, or people, places and objects, to deliver relevant answers. Metaweb provides widgets and custom integrations of this semantic search technology for content providers.
Metaweb, according to this demo, uses existing relational context to suss out users’ intend in their searches where several different words may be used to query against one entity.
Google intends to use Freebase to help quickly bring Web searchers accurate answers to questions that are tough for a computer to answer.
Specifically, Google will use the Freebase assets to improve existing search tools such as rich snippets and searches for factual answers.
Google Director of Product Management Jack Menzel explained in a blog postthat while users can currently find answers such as President Barack Obama’s birthday or specific events happening in a city, there are additional layers of search and fact finding Google’s existing technology could not serve.
“We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one Oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.”
The buy also comes nearly two years after Microsoft acquired Powerset to help its Bing search engine bridge the semantic Web.
Powerset provided search results from a multitude of articles from Wikipedia and, ironically enough, the Freebase database Google now owns.
In that vein, it is fair to question whether Google will tinker with Microsoft Bing’s existing use of Freebase. Menzel said Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database and want other Web companies to use and contribute to the data.
“We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the Web richer for everyone,” Menzel explained. “And to the extent the Web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users.”
Translation: Neither Bing nor anyone else threatens our search empire.
However, Freebase said in a blog post it is not taking on new content partners as it seeks to help Google “link content with entities.”
The buy comes two weeks after Google moved to purchase ITA Software for $700 million, a deal that is soon to face scrutiny from federal regulators.

Source: eWeek

Herbalife India, a nutrition company, on Friday announced the renewal of its brand endorsement partnership with India’s badminton sensation Saina Nehwal by one year.

Saina, who climbed to a career best second spot in the latest world rankings after winning three international titles — India Open Grand Prix, Singapore Open Super Series and Indonesia Open Super Series — has been associated with Herbalife since 2009, a press release said.

“We at Herbalife are proud to renew our long standing partnership with Saina Nehwal. With Herbalife’s extensive growth plans for India, we are happy to have the support of Saina, who has been creating ripples across the world, as we embark on our journey together,” Ajay Khanna, Country Head, Herbalife India said in the release.

Commenting on the deal, Saina said, “From the time I first started using Herbalife products, I have always believed in their vision of helping change people’s lives that has certainly made a difference to many, across the globe.”

Source: Economic Times

The Indian rupee will soon have a unique symbol, a blend of the Devanagri ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’, joining elite currencies like the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen in having a distinct identity.

The new symbol, designed by Bombay IIT post-graduate D Udaya Kumar, was approved by the cabinet today, reflecting that the Indian currency, backed by an over-trillion dollar economy, was finally making its presence felt on the international scene.

“It’s a big statement on the Indian currency… The symbol would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and global face of the Indian economy,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

Though the symbol will not be printed or embossed on currency notes or coins, it would be included in the ‘Unicode Standard’ and major scripts of the world to ensure that it is easily displayed and printed in the electronic and print media.

Among currencies with distinctive identities, only the pound sterling has its symbol printed on the notes.

Unicode is an international standard that allows text data to be interchanged globally without conflict. After incorporation in the global and Indian codes, the symbol would be used by all individuals and entities within and outside the country.

The symbol will be adopted in a span of six months in the country, and within 18 to 24 months globally, Soni said, adding that it will feature on computer keyboards and softwares for worldwide use.

Soni said that the symbol, which reflects the Indian ethos and culture, would help distinguish the currency from the rupee or rupiah of other countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Besides this, state governments would be asked to proactively promote the use of the new symbol, she added.

Kumar’s entry was chosen from 3,000 designs competing for the currency symbol. He will get an award of Rs 2.5 lakh.

“It is a perfect blend of Indian and Roman letters — capital ‘R’ and Devanagri ‘Ra’ which represents rupaiah, to appeal to international and Indian audiences… My design is based on the tricolour, with two lines at the top and white space in between,” a visibly-happy Kumar said.

The jury, which had sent the five short-listed entries for the cabinet’s approval, was headed by a Reserve Bank Deputy Governor.

Source: Economic Times

PTE Academic — the English language test developed by Pearson Education — was launched eight months ago and is in the process of being recognised by more than 1500 programmes worldwide. It is endorsed by the Graduate Management Admission Council GMAC, the owners of the Graduate Management Admission test GMAT.

“We have a 10-year plan for the test and are targeting 3 per cent of the academic English market in India which is currently 200,000 students. For us, the testing parameters are listening, reading, writing and speaking and all these four modules can be tested in three hours,” said John K Philip, Regional Director (SAARC Countries), Pearson Language Tests.

The computer-based test is delivered on a ‘choose and book’ basis rather than on fixed dates and test takers can schedule their appointment just 24 hours before their test and results are delivered in two business days, according to Pearson.

Pearson is in talks with both Indian and foreign universities that accept international students and where English is the preferred language of teaching.

Moreover, Pearson has also tied up with almost 100 test preparation centres across the country and also offers online tests for students. The unscored practice tests are for free while the scored ones cost $20 (Rs 950) each.

Source: Business Standard